I recently submitted a couple images in to the 18th annual Oil Painters of America show. The thing with this show is that only one of the paintings can even end up in it, and the chances of that happening, given the sheer amount of entries, is very unlikely. But I entered the following paintings anyway because it is such a prestigious show and I really admire the judge’s work. 

The judge for the show is Kevin Macpherson(click on the link to see his work) who is a very well known landscape painter.   I’ve got both of his books and have read them cover to cover several times. The books are pictured at left and you can link up to buy them by clicking on them as well. The books are,”Landscape Painting Inside and Out,” and “Fill Your Oil Paintings With Light and Color.” He writes about painting in a way that is easy to understand and gives a lot of examples to further illustrate the concepts. Another thing about Kevin that I really like is that he paints with a limited pallet. 

A “limited pallet” refers to the pallet of colors that each artist chooses to paint with. Some artists go with a wide variety of colors to put out when painting, others use fewer colors. The latter is called working with a “limited pallet”, but it is actually more liberating than limited. Obviously, a painter doesn’t go out in to nature with every color in the Universe from “Snow in the Shadows Blue” to “Ponderosa Pine Needle in the Afternoon Light Green” all bottled up neatly in tubes. A painter has to pick and choose his colors and brands carefully in order that they can paint a variety of subjects by mixing the appropriate color from what choices of paint they make. If a painter is painting representationally, then they will need at least the three primary colors and white. Since I do a lot of on-location painting, and hiking up to five or six miles in to a place with my easel is part of the painting process, I use a “limited pallet” of seven colors.   While my specific pallet deviates a bit from other limited pallets, I find it to be the most versatile for me. In my choices every color better be a workhorse, or it gets “fired.”  (For more information on color and color theory, my pallet of colors, the brushes I use, some techniques I’ve found to be useful, etc. click HERE)

So we’ll see what happens, and you can bet I’ll keep you posted. I should know if I got a painting in the show by the end of February.